KEY POINTS:
Labour Party has set up a powerful central vetting committee, including Helen Clark's chief of staff, Heather Simpson, to inspect every proposed publication by every Labour candidate and every Labour MP in election year.
The party committee vets material whether paid for by the party or by Parliament _ including websites, mass mail-outs to constituents and advertisements.
The party's communications manager, Jenny Michie, last night explained the new vetting procedure: "Labour head office has ordered absolutely every single candidate, MP, any financial agent, manager _ all of their material has to come through an approval group."
She said all material that was intended to be published, not just material that was proposed to be authorised by a financial agent, was to go before the group.
As well as setting spending limits for third parties, the new Electoral Finance Act establishes a complex compliance regime around election advertising and heavy penalties for breaches.
Instead of trying to educate all MPs and candidates on the act, it was decided it would be simpler to run a centralised approvals process.
"We want people to stay out of trouble," Jenny Michie said.
She also said an advantage of seeing everything was that the group could sometimes suggest that something might not be a good use of someone's time or a good use of money.
The group meets on the ninth floor of the Beehive _ the Prime Minister's floor _ at 4pm every Thursday.
Its membership comprises Heather Simpson, Jenny Michie, party general secretary Mike Smith, communications manager in the Prime Minister's Office Andrew Cutler, and a staff member from the Labour whip's office.
Lack of clarity over the new act and uncertainty over how widely the election authorities will interpret "election advertising" has forced the more centralised approach by Labour.
The act had broadened the definition to mean any form of words or graphic that could reasonably be regarded as designed to encourage or persuade someone to support a party or candidate.
The act is not working in the way that Labour had anticipated because it expected that most material its MPs produced under parliamentary funding would not be counted as election expense, whereas the Electoral Commission has no regard as to how material is funded.
But Labour's response appears to be to take a lot more care on how it is spending its parliamentary funds.
Other parties, such as New Zealand First, the Greens and Act, are putting the authorisation that is required on election advertising on to their material funded by Parliament, which is not meant to fund election advertising.
New Zealand First's weekend post-Budget advertising campaign was paid for by taxpayers and carried a parliamentary crest, but was authorised as an election ad.
That means the party can't be prosecuted if it is found to be an election ad _ but the cost of it will have to be counted against the party's total election expenses.
The Electoral Commission has yet to rule on whether similar New Zealand First ads about the free trade agreement with China (which were not authorised) were election ads.
The commission next meets on June 12. Outstanding issues include the registration of the Engineering, Printing and Manufacturing Union as a third party, and whether or not a party logo in itself is an election advertisement under the act.
